A friend of mine taught at U of H and loved Houston. Plus its warm, which is nice.

I haven't heard much positive about Detroit and Pittsburgh. As Linanil said houses can be cheap (they even have $1 houses that you can buy and fix up) and I know its an area where there is a rapidly growing Muslim population who feels like Detroit is a great place to be successful (read that in Time magazine at the MDs today :) ).

_________________My oven is bigger on the inside, and it produces lots of wibbly wobbly, cake wakey... stuff. - The PoopieB.

Pittsburgh sucks asparagus as far as I'm concerned. The PPKers I met were nice, but in general I think people are rude, public transportation sucks, and it's really difficult to drive in the city.

_________________No. No. fork life allatimes. - mumblesThat commercial didn't make me want to go out and buy Dove, but this thread did make me sniff my armpits. They smell like apricot. - designedtobekind

Spent Thanksgiving in Houston with my husband's family right before we were married. Hated it. Visiting the Space Center was cool, but it was warm, humid, crowded, and people on the freeway, if there was a traffic jam, just headed up the grass to the nearest exit.

I can't imagine it being a good place for vegans; this was WAY pregan.

Houston traffic is terrible. You need big guts just to merge on the highway. It's a very sprawling city. There are some neat things like the menil collection, the orange show, NASA, and the art car parade. And I've heard good things about vegan Asian food there.

I don't think I've ever heard anything positive about Detroit. Everything I've read makes it out to be a lawless, bombed out shell of a city. I read an article before about a retired truck driver who now makes his living hunting raccoons in the city and selling their meat out of his shanty. I once saw a collection of photos of abandoned buildings in Detroit that could've been labeled as pictures of Pripyat and I would've never known the difference.

It kind of makes me want to move up there and buy out a city block. I wonder what the internet connectivity up there is like.

Pittsburgh sucks asparagus as far as I'm concerned. The PPKers I met were nice, but in general I think people are rude, public transportation sucks, and it's really difficult to drive in the city.

I live in Pittsburgh now, and I definitely agree with the bad public transportation (the 28x is the only one that runs on time consistently, and ) and the difficulty of driving (I had to drive in the snow today and I thought I was going to shiitake bricks). On the other hand, I'm in Oakland/Shadyside/Squirrel Hill/CMU area, and it's kinda nice. It's pretty quiet up here, but I only have to walk a few blocks for food and stuff. There's a lot of zipcars nearby so I don't have to bother with owning a car if I don't want to (and I don't have to rely on public transport for a lot of stuff) (though I guess permanent residents would need one), though most the driving I've done hasn't been too bad (except for the snow).

Also, I go to CMU, so I don't really have a choice but to like Pittsburgh. Though CMU itself is really nice! It's pretty, in a nerdy sort of way, we have old-school academic buildings connected to concrete monsters and neat zinc-coated buildings, and we have lots of fun crazy people here (like the guy duct-taped to the wall advertising a comedy event).

Not a lot of all-veg places, but most of the places around Pitt and CMU will have at least a few vegan items on the menu.

Everything I ever heard of Pittsburgh made it sound like a law-abiding Detroit. It's really not *that* bad here. You can't go wrong with a city whose major industries include robots. Seriously.

I love Houston, I don't know why. I want to move there. I love the weather, the atmosphere, the bad traffic, everything. Houston is that "happy place," for me, where I can ignore all the bad things and wear my rosy shades all day long.

mollyjade wrote:

And I've heard good things about vegan Asian food there.

You need guts just to take to the roads in Houston. And the public transportation nearly killed me twice in one day, but I won't hold that against Houston. Last time I was there my friend took me to a Vietnamese restaurant called Mai's, they had the best Tofu I've ever had in my life. The. Best. I'll put it this way, I live in Dallas and often consider driving to Houston just to eat at Mai's, then driving back home. Apparently Mai's burned down a couple of days after I left! :< I hope they rebuilt it.

Quinne wrote:

and people on the freeway, if there was a traffic jam, just headed up the grass to the nearest exit.

I thought people did that everywhere... ? I've never done it for fear of my car getting stuck, but I've thought about doing it every time I'm stuck in traffic. Houston is notorious for having bad traffic, though.

One of my good friends went to CMU (a full tenth of my high school graduating class went to CMU. Weird.) and therefore lived in PGH for four years.

I went to visit her last summer, and although we pretty much cooked our own food, she did have some salsa that was pretty great (I am going to be no help because I definitely don't remember what these places were called) and talked about a pizza place with tempeh wings. And we went to a concert and there was some dude outside selling vegan tamales from, like, his bike or something.

I heard that Detroit is terrifying, and I agreed when I was there for all of an hour. I crossed the border on a bus from Canada in the middle of the night, there were sirens and things on fire everywhere and the customs staff were just mean. And they unpacked my bags and threw the stuff back at me once they'd checked it out, leaving me to repack all my stuff on a street corner.